Unruhige Jahre

Four young men live on a houseboat and have serious-comic adventures. It was by far my favorite show of the '62-'63 season but I only remember fragments now. One episode had mishaps of hauling a load of tires cross country where all the tires eventually ended up rolling away down a hill. Another had one of the main characters doing something wrong enough to threaten Glenn Corbett's guardianship of orphaned brother Michael Burns. The four male leads were up and coming faces on TV. They all went onto other TV series but Glen Corbett and Ted Bessell endured the longest. Would love to see these shows again after forty years to see if they compare well to my fond memories.

I was 13 when this show disappeared almost as quickly as it arrived. I was crushed when it was canceled.

As with someone who wrote earlier, it was the first time I ever wrote a letter to a network protesting the cancellation of a series. Never got a reply. I recall it as my first sense of outrage against "the system," and a sense of frustration that my voice could not make a difference. I spent my boyhood in Southern Ohio on the banks of the Ohio River where this series was situated and I really related to the characters and the story line. "Its a Man's World" was certainly way ahead of its time, and came nearly at the precise moment former FCC chairman Netwon Minow was proclaiming network television "A vast wasteland." I also remember an article in TV Guide about the cast doing something totally unprecedented. Upon learning the show was being canceled, Bessell and the others visited potential new sponsors in hopes of saving the show. This cast really believed in that show but they lost. And so did we.

Know what? 44 years later, I still recall the theme song, that haunting melody, played on a harmonica.

I hope they find the masters get it all on DVD.

There are 19 episodes of the one-hour series which aired on NBC from Fall, 1962 until just after the turn of the year, 1963 - and was then canceled by NBC, over many protests nationwide. Copyright is owned by Universal and the "masters" (16mm I believe) are among the holdings of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Archives at UCLA. Director Peter Tewksbury and stars Glenn Corbett (Wes) and Ted Bessell (Tom Tom) are all now deceased. Star Michael Burns (a Yale PhD, author and retired professor from Mt.Holyoke College lives in Danville, KY); star Randy Boone still lives in southern California. How do I know? I worked on all 19 episodes of "It's A Man's World." Bill (Now ret. in Kansas City)

It's really nice to read the comments from those of you who remember, as do I, the best series of the early 60s. Like so many of you, I was absolutely crushed when I learned that the show was going to be canceled. If memory serves, that was the first time I was moved to write a letter of protest. (I was a teenager and identified strongly with the show--this may have laid the seeds of further activism a few years later, when protest truly came into its own.) The thing that stands out most to me as I think back now, is reading in TV Guide that the reason the show was being canceled is that it was considered "too intelligent". I was appalled! What a sad, sad commentary on the time, on our country, on the TV industry in general...

If we're voting, I cast mine with the rest of the people who would buy a DVD of the series. Come on, doesn't someone out there have (1) the necessary connections and (2) the desire to make some money??

It's difficult to explain exactly why IAMW was such an extraordinarily fine piece of television theater. Partially, of course, is that it was produced at a time when most television drama was either heavy-duty major productions or amazingly stupid sit-coms. IAMW was well acted, well produced and well written. It showed a group of ordinary, nice people getting on with their lives as best they could. The dialog was intelligent. The characters were people you knew from your own life. There were no terrible crises, no violence, no darkness beyond people worrying about what the right thing to do was, but it wasn't Beaver Knows Best and Father is a Dope, which were your other choices. It wasn't bland. It wasn't simple. It wasn't boring. It was real and it was decent and it was interesting. What more can you ask for?